César Antov
César Gregory Antov '(1925-1976) was the President of Rhamidia from 1965 to 1970 and the Supreme Leader of Rhamidia from 1970 to 1976, during which time he fought the Great Rhamidian War. A Rhamidi nationalist and so-called "national socialist," Antov supported the strengthening of the Rhamidian state to become a world power through rapid industrialization, urbanization, militarism, the suppression of minorities, and the outword expansion of national borders. He transformed the weak Third Republic of Rhamidia into a powerful, autocratic nation-state with himself at the head, and begin the bloody four-year long conflict known as the Great Rhamidian War. Antov dominated Rhamidia and the Rhamidian War during the course of the war, acting as the chief general on both fronts of the war up until his surrender in 1976 to the joint Basalteinelli-Oshgan troops. He was returned to Varnessia where he was tried and sentenced to life imprisonment; however, on the way out of the city, Antov was attacked by an angry mob and shot. Ever since his death, Antov has been portrayed in historical literature in a very negative light, with numerous polls casting him as the worst person who ever lived. Antov's ideology and symbolism have become extremely frowned upon all across the world, and he is often represented as a face of evil. Despite this, some modern philosophers have drawn connections to Antov's ideas, and see him as a culmination of a line of autrocratic thought that goes all the way back to the advent of democracy, with figures such as William Wallace Somers echoing many of Antov's phrases four hundred years earlier. Many supranationalist and anti-democratic groups see Antov as a tragic figure who has been unfairly painted in a bad light due to his defeat in the war, and whose ideas could have flourished had he not been forced to fight a war. Early Life: 1925-1957 César Antov was born in 1925 in Aleolus, Rhamidia, a regional city in the province of Teracha. His father, Nathan Antov was a carpenter, and his mother Sara was a schoolteacher; they lived a middle-class lifestyle in a modern home. Antov had no siblings, and was supposedly spoiled as a child, although his father also allegedly pushed him very hard to be successful in life, always telling him to get better and better grades even when he had some of the best grades in the class. Antov acceled throughout elementary and high school, earning high remarks from his teachers and graduating at the top of his class. In high school, he was exposed to a range of ideas that would influence him throughout life; he would later cite the political science class that he took in senior year with having had the most profound effect on his worldview. In it, he studied traditional democratic texts as well as Wallace's ''Man and His Government and Marvaputhram's On the Governance of Societies, which he found particularly stirring. Marvaputhram in particular fascinated him, and he began teaching himself Toranese at the age of seventeen in order to read Marvaputhram in the original. He also studied Old Rramidi along with his other classmates, but he was the only one to be fully fluent by his graduation. He scored exceedingly well on all manner of college entrance exams and found himself accepted at Correfuscidia Univeristy. '''University Life Antov visited Correfuscidia, and immediately loved the Rramidi influence on campus and the intense academic spirit of the university. He choose to live at Varagon College, one of the university's two Rramidi-speaking colleges, and spoke Rramidi in his college for all of his undergraduate experience. He studied a wide range of subjects, but he always came back to political philosophy, including the same old favorites. But it was at Corresfuscidia that Antov fell in love with ancient Rhamidi culture and hilosophy, extensively reading Rhamidi texts and historical analyses of the empire. He developed a particular interest in the fourth-century Rhamidi philosopher Aretagous. Aretagous had received only a moderate amount of attention over history, but Antov loved him, and would later claim that "philosophy has not truly made any progress since Aretagous; we've only said things in new ways." At Correfusicida he met Opher Karst, a native Rramidi student two years older than him who expressed some interest in him. Karst had participated in the March on Sciperin in 1942, protesting corruption in the Gloern government. Since then, he had become very involved in student political groups at Correscidia, and was an accomplished organizer and speaker. He convinced Antov to join him in supporting a teacher's strike in Correscidia in 1944. According to Antov's 1971 biography, although Antov informed him that he was not interested in teachers, Karst replied, "It's not about the teachers, it's about what it stands for. It's about standing up to authority, to the people who call the shots, and saying, 'No.'" After that, Antov became very involved in strikes around the Correfuscidia area. After his graduation in 1945, Antov spent a year in Toran, participating in several protests while he was there. While in Toran, he gained a significant amount of respect for the Toranese culture and heritage, writing "Toran, it seems to me, is a real country, a country since the beginning, not a state that was built up by others and then ungratefully tore independence from its fathers like an ungrateful child..." In 1946, Antov returned to Rhamidia to study ancient Rramidi philosophy at the University of Rhamusia. There he did personal, in-depth studies of the original Aretagous and other philosophers. During this period, he allegedly kept a copy of Aretagous's The Tyrant and the Sheep ''and Marvaputhram's ''On the Governance of Societies, now in the original Toranese, by his bedside table. It was at Rhamusia that Antov perfected his political ideology. He became very interested in what made Rhamidia an "original" nation, and how nearly every other country of the Northern Continent, with the exception of Norik, was only usurping power and grandeur that had been built up by Rhamidia. He also traced a line past democracy to Wallace's third form of government, which Marvaputhram described as the end point of society. Aretagous called it tyranny, but at that time the word did not have such a negative connotation; what he meant was, the complete power by one man who represents the nation and all of its interests. In 1949, while still at Rhamusia, Antov published a short book, titled The Tyrant and the Nation-State, which became mildly popular among students and the educated in the city, who found it thought-provoking, even if untrue. Also in 1949, Antov witnessed the speech of Juan García on the news; Juan García's national convictions allegedly moved him beyond words. Like how García felt that Eqota was a country whose ancient grandeur had been muddied by political corruption, Antov saw Rhamidia as a fallen superpower worthy of reclaiming its throne. He received an invitation from Karst to join him in the Qotian Revolution; however, Antov said that he wanted to stay in Rhamidia because he could already see the political backlash there. Under Karst's guidance, Antov began joining and leading groups of protesters across Rhamusia and Rhamidia who, inspired by García, sought to reform the Rhamidian political system, or even an outright revolution against then-dictator Mikael Blumen. These early revolutionaries generally fell into two camps: those whose objections to Blumen came from his lack of democratic processes, and those who felt that he was weak and ineffective and should be replaced with someone who made Rhamidia stronger. Although Antov fell into the second camp, he protested for both, in Rhamusia and other Rhamidian cities. When the King of Eqota was overthrown in 1950, Karst came to Rhamidia to join in the revolt there, and soon became a leader. In late 1950, after over a year of protesting, Blumen's government finally went from simply trying to disseminate the protesters to attacking them. Twentty people died in a protest that Antov and Karst organized in December of 1950, but that only made them push on harder against Blumen's government. Six months and two hundred casualties later, including an irreparably broken leg for Karst, Blumen resigned as leader. Antov and Karst both joined the commission to create a new Rhamidian government, although it was led by a general and poltician by the name of Arett Stone. Stone was very much a democrat, and sponsored the creation of a new democratic constitution for Rhamidia that would guarantee less government power. Antov adamantly decried this as a step backwars, but most of the assembly did not listen to him, and, in January of 1952, the Third Rhamidian Republic was declared. After the revolution, Karst told Antov that he was going to return to Gloernivard to try and get involved in politics. Antov spent the next four years writing a book and watching as the Third Republic failed, each president more weak and ineffective than the last. He titled his book Rhamidia and the Nation, and it was immediately successful, hitting a nerve in the collective Rhamidian conscious. It sold all across Rhamidia, and by 1957 he was known all across Rhamidia, which gave him a stepping stone from which to launch his political career. Political Career: 1957-1968 In 1957, Antov ran for the Senate, and won easily. He was an outspoken critic of President Patrik Aysick, whom he saw as an imposter. Supreme Leader: 1968-1972 The Great War: 1972-1976 Trial and Death Category:Great Rhamidian War Category:Rhamidian nationalism Category:Nationalism Category:Anti-democratic philosophy Category:Presidents of Rhamidia Category:Rhamidian Third Republic Category:Rhamidian Socialist Republic Category:The 1970s Category:Marvaputhramism Category:Political philosophy